Debate Rages in Germany Over Muslim Immigrants

Thilo Sarrazin is the director of Germany's central bank, the
Bundesbank. He has always been a provocative thinker. But now he has a
new book out called, roughly translated, "Germany Is Destroying Itself"
in which he argues that Muslim immigrants pose an existential threat to Germany as it
is currently known. Not only are Muslim African and Middle Eastern
immigrants in Germany currently un-integrated and poor, but in 120
years, he claims (erroneously,
says Der Spiegel), 70 percent of the German population will be made up of
these immigrants. His solution? Well-educated Germans need to out-breed
them. It's time to step up reproduction in the upper classes.

You
can see how this might cause an uproar, particularly in a country ever-conscious of its 20th-century history. Germany has exploded with
the backlash, and the tense, ensuing debate about integration. Meanwhile, other countries are watching with interest and concern, as immigration debates heat up there, as well. Here's a sample of
reaction from both sides of the Atlantic.

The Questions This Raises for Germany "In just two weeks," points out the massive team put together by Der Spiegel
to cover the story, "Germany has been hit by three waves of debate
stemming from the tome." The first was "criticism bordering on
revulsion. ... Then it slowly became apparent that many citizens agreed
with Sarrazin." The third wave involves "politicians ... demanding that
the political elite cease ignoring the fact that many in Germany
support Sarrazin." Der Spiegel's team then notes that Germany,
seemingly "cleaved in two" by this book--one side "horrified by
Sarrazin's choice of words" and the other "support[ing] such a
forthright assessment of integration--is now dealing with "three big
questions":

In what country are we living? ... The popular approval of Sarrazin leads us to question
whether there isn't an underlying xenophobia after all.

The
second question the debate raises concerns the current state of
affairs. Is Sarrazin right when he claims that the integration of Turks
and Arabs has largely been a failure? ... The third question has to do
with the relationship between the political and journalistic class with
the rest of the country. Do citizens feel abandoned on the question of
integration? Or, asked another way, does Germany have a fertile
breeding ground for the kind of populist right-wing party that is
already par for the course in many European countries?

Just How Offensive Is This Book?Joachim Güntner,
Berlin cultural correspondent for the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, offers a
painstakingly even-handed evaluation, translated at Signandsight. "You
can read seven, perhaps even eight or nine chapters of 'Deutschland
schafft sich ab [the title] and come across plenty of nay-saying but
little of real offence," he decides. The author "has a merciless
streak," and "openly denies any rich-poor divide"; he relies on
"second-hand information" in his description of certain areas; and his
"little jaunt into theories of justice" is a bit rocky. Where Sarrazin
really gets into "unsavoury" territory is in "the defamatory way he
combines remarks on the 'uneducated' milieus of Muslim migrants in
Germany with dubious sentences about hereditary intelligence." Decides
Güntner:

That the "instruments" Sarrazin recommends for
raising the birth rate among the educated classes are of a
socio-political and fiscal nature and have nothing to do with the
biology of breeding, should be added to his defence. ... But this does
not alter his fundamental belief that the intelligence of the
population can be boosted by the mating of bright minds ... Sarrazin has only himself to blame for his being given the role of the bogeyman.

Its Genetics, at Least, Are Very Out of Date, remarks Alex Harrowell,
blogging at A Fistful of Euros. "It's not just that Sarrazin’s
political thought is trapped in the Wilhelmine era--his understanding
of genetics is, too." What Sarrazin doesn't seem to grasp about
"Mendelian genetics," explains Harrowell, is that "Variation is
conserved." In other words, he continues dryly, "not only will the
German working class continue to produce bright kids, the elite will
occasionally toss out a Sarrazin."

'Frightening' Echos in
America "The saddest part about Serrazin is not so much Serrazin
himself (I mean, why waste the breath), but about how much he reminds
me of what's going on at home," writes Lauren Markham
at liberal site Change.org. She sees similar "social-Darwinist
thinking--albeit in more latent and less belligerent terms--all the
time in the U.S. immigration debate."

Why the German Backlash Is Misguided The "public lynching" following the book's publication was too much, says Stefan Theil
at Newsweek. He refers, for example, to Germany's chancellor,
president, and finance minister encouraging the Bundesbank to fire
Sarrazin. "That Germany remains hostile to any mingling of genetic
theories with social policy is all to the good," he agrees. But Germany needs
to admit that it has "done just about everything wrong" with regard to
immigration and that there are serious problems with integration and
social stratification:

In Germany, any critique
of the welfare state quickly gets tarred as "social Darwinism," which
fed into Nazi ideology. That has made rational debate of the welfare
system almost impossible, says Thomas Petersen, political analyst at
the Allensbach Institute. But no one--not even Sarrazin--is calling on
immigrants to go home, as former chancellor Helmut Kohl did in the
1990s. Most Germans have come to accept the idea that their nation has
become more multiethnic. And unlike in France or Austria, in Germany
the far right is a tiny fringe, and there is little chance that German
society would ever allow such a party to grow. That's all the more
reason for Germany's establishment to stop thwarting public debates.
Germany's political culture seems less threatened by the extreme right
than by its tendency to publicly destroy contrarian thinkers.

'The Larger Problem'The Guardian's editorial board argues that there are lessons here for other countries:

In Germany as elsewhere, mainstream politicians both play to
anti-immigrant feeling and deplore it. Even while they subtly exploit
the majority's fears, in the name of diversity they tread far too
carefully in their dealings with minorities. This is a bad combination
at a time when economic pressures are widening and a new selfishness
and readiness to blame others is on the rise across Europe.

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